The Burning

by Jane Casey

  The corridor outside the briefing room was crowded. I threaded my way through, trying not to bump into anyone or, worse, rub up against any of the older detectives. Fragments of conversation struck me as I passed.

  ‘This woman is convinced her husband is having an affair …’

  ‘… stops him for not wearing his seat belt …’

  ‘… nice little arse, too …’

  ‘… comes home early, thinking she’ll catch him in the act, but he’s just sitting on the sofa, watching the football. But she’s still suspicious. She searches the whole house, top to bottom, under every bed, in every cupboard, attic, cellar, the works …’

  ‘… checks the boot and there’s a fuck-off great bag of coke. So he hauls the driver out of the car, cuffs him, puts him in the back of the area car …’

  ‘… gagging for it …’

  ‘… the woman has a massive heart attack, keels over and dies. When she gets to heaven, the first person she sees is her next-door neighbour …’

  ‘… he has a look under the seat and finds a sawn-off shotgun, fully loaded. He gets back in the area car and says to the bloke, you’re in a lot of trouble, mate.’

  ‘Cynthia, she says, how did you die? I froze to death, she says. What about you? So she tells her the whole story – coming home early, searching the house.’

  ‘He says, never mind about the gun, am I going to lose my licence?’

  ‘… until she couldn’t walk in a straight line.’

  ‘Cynthia goes, shit, what a shame. If only you’d checked the freezer.’

  Seeing a detective roughly the size and shape of a fully grown rhino moving in my direction, I dived sideways and fetched up beside a back I recognised.

  ‘All right, Rob? Which area did you get?’

  He turned around and the expression on his face was pure embarrassment. ‘Oh. Maeve. Um … hi.’

  I looked past him to see the two DCs he’d been talking to, Harry Maitland and Ben Phipps, killing themselves laughing. I only knew them slightly, but what I knew of them made me think that their amusement was at my expense. A phrase I’d heard moments before floated back into my mind and repeated itself in Rob’s voice. Until she couldn’t walk in a straight line … and I knew without the least doubt that the first part of the sentence would not bear repeating in polite company. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to find out that he was just like the others, but it was, somehow, and I wondered which of the UCs had caught his eye.

  ‘Not dressed yet, Maeve? Thought you’d be getting all dolled up like the others.’ Maitland grinned at me, baring yellow teeth in what he obviously thought was a winning smile. ‘You’re disappointing us.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said. ‘You know I live for your approval.’

  The smile widened. He had white gunge that might have once been bread wadded between two of his molars. ‘Langton here tells us you look good half-naked. Maybe we can persuade you to dress down for us later on.’

  My usual non-confrontation policy when it came to suggestive remarks was just not going to cut it. ‘Yeah, or maybe you can get stuffed.’ While Maitland thought about his comeback, I turned to Rob, who was looking acutely uncomfortable. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘Sure,’ he mumbled, and walked beside me down the hall, away from the others.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ I was still smiling, still looking serene. No one would have known I was shaking with rage.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I really don’t care if you want to join in with the sexist bullshit directed at the UCs – that’s your business, nothing to do with me – but I do mind that you let Maitland insult me and said nothing.’

  ‘I didn’t really get a chance to say anything.’ Rob sounded injured. ‘You were pretty quick off the mark.’

  ‘And what was that about me being half-naked? Did you tell them about coming over to my house? Were you talking about what I was wearing, for Christ’s sake?’

  ‘Not really. No. I just – it just came up.’ He rubbed his hand over his head, ruffling his hair and smoothing it back down. ‘Shit. Look, Maeve—’

  ‘No, you look. You shouldn’t have said anything about that night. It was out of hours, we were off duty, you were a guest in my home and I was entitled to expect that you wouldn’t brag about it to anyone.’ I looked at him, puzzled. ‘And God help you if you think it was worth bragging about anyway. What, we shared a pizza and that’s gossip? Did you tell them about my boyfriend coming home while you were there?’

  Rob looked over my shoulder and grimaced. In spite of my best intentions, my voice had risen and the calm demeanour I’d been struggling to maintain had gone by the wayside. We were attracting attention of the wrong sort. He grabbed my arm and dragged me another few yards down the corridor and around a corner where we wouldn’t be observed.

  ‘Look, I didn’t mean to say anything. They were speculating about what you’d look like in a short skirt, OK? No one here has ever seen you in anything except suits and trousers, and I know it’s deliberate because you want to be taken seriously but it does a damn good job of hiding your figure. Phipps said he thought you probably didn’t have good legs – tall birds never do, according to him. I was just telling them that he was wrong. You have amazing legs.’ The lighting wasn’t particularly good in the corridor, but I was fairly sure that he had gone red. ‘Sorry, but I couldn’t help noticing.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ I said again, but the heat had gone out of my anger. In spite of myself, I started to grin. ‘So I should say thanks for the compliment, is that it?’

  ‘No.’ He gave me a look that was simultaneously shy and cheeky. ‘I owe you an apology. But would you take a coffee instead?’

  I checked my watch. ‘We don’t have time.’

  ‘Not now. Later. We’re not going to be far from where you’ve been posted. I’ll come over around two o’clock.’

  ‘Better bring three coffees,’ I said. ‘Sam and Katy won’t be pleased if I’m the only one who gets a caffeine fix.’

  ‘No problem. I really am sorry. I’d better go.’ He was walking backwards away from me, still with the cheeky grin on his face, looking about nineteen years old with his hair all ruffled and his T-shirt half-tucked into his jeans. ‘It is a shame, though. You had the best legs in the room. None of the UCs were even close.’

  ‘Get on with it, Langton,’ I said in as repressive a tone as I could manage, even though I felt a strange fluttering sensation in my abdomen that might have been my stomach flipping over when he grinned at me. I watched him walk away and my smile turned into a frown.

  It couldn’t be that I fancied him. It wasn’t that. It was something else. Nerves about the undercover op, or the ongoing tension of hunting Rebecca’s killer as well as the Burning Man. It was something completely unrelated to DC Langton, of that I was completely sure.

  It had to be.

  I couldn’t swear that Judd had deliberately chosen the most depressing, bleakest and most godforsaken area on the map for our surveillance team to monitor, but if he’d wanted to find the worst place in the world for us to spend the night, he couldn’t have done any better than our current location. Sam had parked in a side street overlooking the recreation ground, which I recognised from the scene-of-crime photos of Alice Fallon’s body. It was nine weeks exactly since her corpse had been discovered by the wall on the far side of the park from where we sat, and as I surveyed the scene through my discreet infrared binoculars, the scorch marks were still faintly visible on the breezeblocks. In the children’s play area, a swing dangled uselessly, one side detached from its chain, and the plastic slide was splintered at the bottom, a semi-circular chunk broken off leaving an edge that made it too dangerous to use. There were more dead leaves on the ground now, and heavy rain had churned what grass there was into a lake of mud. Otherwise, nothing had changed.

  ‘Better put them down. Don’t want you giving the game away.’ Sam had reclined his seat as far as it would go
and was squinting out through the windscreen, his massive arms folded across his chest. He was wearing a black sweatshirt that had seen better days, and now performed a useful function as the unofficial archive of what Sam had had to eat recently. Egg yolk (from a midnight snack of a breakfast butty) and crisp crumbs featured extensively.

  ‘Yeah, because we look so unobtrusive.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. It’s completely normal for a fat old bloke to spend the night with two beautiful girls. In a car. In the middle of winter. Fully clothed, but freezing my knackers off nonetheless.’ He leaned forward and flicked the heater on.

  ‘You’re steaming the windows up again.’ I slid down my window an inch and icy air struck in at me along with a scattering of sharp raindrops. I buried my chin in my chest, pulling my scarf up around my face to try to keep my nose warm. I had a down-filled jacket wrapped around me, but after hours of sitting still in the car, the cold seemed to have seeped into my very bones.

  ‘Adds to the overall effect, doesn’t it? Looks as if you’re giving me some reason to steam the windows up.’

  ‘Yuck.’ Katy was sitting in the back of the car, a rug over her knees, shivering. ‘This is the worst job ever. Remind me why we’re doing this?’

  ‘Proactive policing,’ Sam and I said in unison.

  ‘Total bollocks,’ the detective said, and I had to agree with her.

  ‘Two more minutes and then you’d better get out there again.’ Sam tapped the clock on the dashboard. ‘You shouldn’t be spending all night in the car. You heard what Judd said. You might miss your big chance.’

  ‘I bet Tom Judd has never had to wander around a park in fishnet tights and a mini,’ Katy said lugubriously. ‘Not in the middle of winter, anyway.’

  ‘I bet he has worn that kind of thing, though. In the privacy of his own home.’

  We sat in silence for a minute, reflecting on the image I had conjured up. Sam spoke for the three of us. ‘Jesus.’

  A rattle of rain splattered the windscreen and Katy flinched. ‘Is that sleet?’

  I busied myself in checking the surveillance log on my knee, letting Sam break the bad news.

  ‘It is indeed. More where that came from, I’d say. I wouldn’t send a dog out in weather like this, would you, Maeve?’

  ‘Shut up, Sam,’ I said calmly. ‘Katy, do you think you could stand to have another wander around? It has been a while.’

  ‘Yeah, why not.’ She gathered up her bag and checked her make-up in the rear-view mirror. Under her breath, she added, ‘I was just starting to get the feeling back in my feet. Wouldn’t want to get used to that or anything.’

  ‘Never mind, darling.’ Sam stretched and then scratched his belly. ‘I can think of a few ways to warm you up when you get back.’

  She slammed the door hard enough to make us both jump and I scowled at her as she walked away, hoping that she hadn’t woken anyone up in the houses on either side of us. It was an odd area, a mixture of housing and industrial units, and owed much of its character to having been bombed to smithereens during the Blitz. The odd half-terrace of townhouses hinted at a prestigious past but most of them had been converted to flats, and not well-maintained ones at that.

  ‘No one about. Not surprising, given the weather,’ Sam observed.

  ‘Yeah, and the serial killer. Don’t forget about him. He’s probably putting off a fair few of the locals from taking a nice nocturnal stroll.’

  Katy wandered across the recreation ground as if taking a shortcut and stopped halfway to light a cigarette. The microphone she was wearing picked up the rasp of the lighter and every rustle from her clothes. She took a long, slow look around while she dragged on the cigarette, and while her hand was still covering her mouth, whispered, ‘Still nothing.’

  We watched her move away, walking slowly.

  ‘What’s this?’ Sam sat up straight for once and pointed at a car that was creeping along the street on the other side of the park, going at about five miles an hour. ‘One occupant, silver saloon car – Ford Focus, something like that. What’s he up to?’

  I lifted the binoculars again and focused on the driver, feeling my heart thudding. There had been plenty of silver saloons on the CCTV I’d watched over the past few weeks. Maybe we’d missed something. He was poking at his sat nav, his face illuminated eerily. I estimated he was in his mid-forties, white, with thick greying hair and a heavy beard. After a moment, the car started to pick up speed and took one of the other streets that led off the park, driving towards Stockwell.

  ‘Nothing doing,’ I said, putting the binoculars down again. ‘But you could get on the radio and mention he’s driving around, in case someone else sees him acting suspiciously, I suppose. I don’t think he even saw Katy, to be honest with you. He didn’t seem to look at the park at all.’

  The wind gusted again, tossing the bushes that lined the recreation ground and setting the broken swing to twist uselessly. The rain that had been speckling the windscreen suddenly gathered strength and the world outside the car blurred. Sam swore quietly and flicked on the windscreen wipers. One of them dragged on each pass with a squeak that set my teeth on edge. Katy had made it to the other side of the park and was wandering down the street, head bent, with only a brightly coloured umbrella to protect her from the elements. She flickered in and out of sight as she passed behind the bare trees. Now you see me, now you don’t.

  I jumped about a mile as the car door behind me suddenly opened with a blast of cold air. It was tinged with the scent of coffee, and as Rob sat into the back seat, balancing a little cardboard tray in one hand, I twisted around to look at him. Rain was dripping from his hair and down his nose. He was wearing a navy-blue windcheater that was slick with water and his jeans looked soaked.

  ‘Wet out, isn’t it?’

  ‘Just a touch,’ he said pleasantly and handed me a cup. ‘Black coffee for you. Sam, black or white?’

  ‘White, two sugars.’

  Rob rummaged in his jacket pocket and produced a handful of packets of sugar, little cartons of UHT milk and a couple of coffee stirrers, which he dumped into the coin tray behind the handbrake. Sam looked at them and raised an eyebrow. ‘Didn’t realise we had a branch of Starbucks in the back seat. Any chance of a blueberry muffin?’

  ‘Just be grateful for what you’ve got. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a coffee around here at this hour of the morning?’

  ‘Not very? These came from the garage down the road,’ I pointed out. ‘Must have taken you all of three minutes to walk there.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was raining, in case you hadn’t noticed, and cold.’

  ‘Poor angel.’

  ‘To what do we owe the pleasure?’ Sam said. ‘Bored, are you?’

  ‘I promised I’d do a coffee run.’ He caught my eye for a second and gave me the ghost of a wink and my stomach flipped over again – what was wrong with me? ‘And besides, Andrews keeps farting. I had to get out of there or I’d have passed out.’

  ‘We’re having the same trouble. Sorry, Maeve, but it’s true. I warned you not to have baked beans for dinner.’

  ‘Fuck off, Sam,’ I began, but before I could say anything else, Rob’s hand came down on my shoulder and gripped me, hard.

  ‘Wait a second. What’s that?’

  The silver car was back, cruising past the end of the street with its lights off. As we watched, the brake lights glowed and it ground to a halt, engine throbbing. The driver was a silhouette but I could make out the beard and the streetlight struck a metallic gleam on his hair. All of his attention was directed towards the other end of the recreation ground, where a brightly coloured umbrella was bobbing along in time to the staccato stride of a very cold UC officer. I picked up my radio.

  ‘Katy, we’ve got a man in a four-door saloon car, silver, no licence plate yet, parked on the west side of the park. He seems to be watching you, but we’ll leave him be for a minute and see what he does.’

  Her voice was muff
led as she whispered a quiet OK. Not far away, a moped engine whined. The sound came through the open car window and was echoed by Katy’s microphone; it had to be at her end of the park. I could see now that the silver car was indeed a Ford Focus.

  ‘We need the index for a PNC check.’

  Rob had already opened the car door and was easing himself out, keeping low to the ground. ‘I’m on it. Back in two.’ He stopped. ‘My radio is buggered, by the way. Can you run the check for me?’

  ‘Will do,’ Sam said. ‘Off you go.’

  The moped engine changed note, sounding like a stuttering hornet, and it sounded louder through Katy’s microphone as it neared her. I watched Rob move cautiously down the street until he reached a point where he could see the back end of the Ford but remain unobserved. He started back towards us after a couple of seconds and Sam lowered his window, holding his hand out for the bit of paper Rob lobbed to him.

  ‘MP from Tango Alpha Six Five,’ he muttered into the radio.

  ‘MP receiving, go ahead.’ The controller in the main Met control room sounded harassed, as if it was a busy night.

  ‘Would you oblige me with a vehicle PNC check.’ Sam gave the controller the car’s location and the licence-plate number, sounding as calm as if it was routine. My throat was aching with tension.

  ‘Wait one.’ The controller went off the air for a few seconds. ‘Comes back to a Ford Focus, silver, MOT current, insurance good, registered owner is the Sunday Courier. No reports. All received?’

  ‘Tango Alpha Six Five, all received, nothing further.’ Sam turned to Rob, who was crouching beside his door. ‘He’s a fucking hack, out trying his luck. Do you want to go and have a word, or shall I?’